Study shows number of tobacco-dependent people highest in 15 years

PHILADELPHIA Research presented at this year’s CHEST annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians Tuesday showed that the amount of people dealing with nicotine dependence is at a 15-year high. And among smokers, that severity of dependence have increased 12 percent between 1989 and 2006, reports said.

The report also stated that among those smokers who are seeking treatment to quit, about three-quarters are considered “highly nicotine dependent”—an increase of 32 percent since 1989.

“After treating tobacco-dependent patients for the last 25 years and conducting many tobacco dependence clinical treatment trials, I began to see a shift in severity of physical, nicotine dependence that required me to develop more intensive treatment plans for my patients,” David Sachs, a doctor at the Palo Alto Center for Pulmonary Disease Prevention and lead author of the study said. But Sachs and his colleagues did not provide an easy answer for why the numbers of nicotine dependent individuals were on the rise.

Sachs, his colleagues from Palo Alto Center for Pulmonary Disease Prevention and researchers from  St. Helena Hospital in Napa, Calif., concluded that more personalized, direct forms of outreach and treatment might be needed to deal with stronger cases of nicotine dependency. Sachs also stated that physicians may need to increase doses of prescription aids to help quit smoking, mix and match treatments and focus more on helping with symptoms of withdrawal.

At the meeting, ACCP president James Mathers announced that with results of the study, he and his colleagues at the American College of Chest Physicians would make a no smoking pledge to be tobacco-free and deepen their commitment to helping patients quit.

More information on the ACCP and reports are available online at www.chestnet.org.